Zayo already has some fiber listed on their map in Albuquerque, but it's just a few miles of downtown fiber that probably came with 360Networks, and they have until now served the city from a single PoP. The new build will add up to 158 route miles of new network, covering the Albuquerque metro area from South Valley to Bernalillo in the North, east to Highway 556 at the foot of the Sandia Mountains, and west to Highway 448.

For a metro area having a growing population that is approaching a million, Albuquerque seems to have comparatively few fiber alternatives - or at least ones I have been able to find for my metro fiber maps page for the region. Phoenix gets all the attention in the desert Southwest of course. tw telecom has an Albuquerque fiber presence that derives from the Xspedius purchase, but I presume the rest is largely CenturyLink/Qwest.

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We got TWTC to build out to a single tenant building of ours in Albuquerque, but the fiber was already in a vault on our property so the buildout was small (it was Xspedius fiber). Comcast doesnt do any kind of metro fiber in the city (legacy or new). John at CityLink does some, but with a limited footprint. I think the city can use all the metro fiber it can get, so this is good for them!

Surprising but refreshing. ABQ suffers from what many growing but down-market cities do: the completely irrational pricing pushed into the telecom realm by customers who expect a POP to POP type Level 3 bottom feeder rate table… believing that should be applied to new fiber expansion, makes it so that providers are very skittish to spend that sort of capital. Surprising, then, that a cautious actor like TW would have done such a thing.

Here’s to hoping Zayo isn’t going down the Level 3 (or federal government, for that matter) rathole of crossing your fingers and endlessly spending into some magical mystery land profitability model on a spreadsheet.